THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
One of the cones
sharp contrast against
looms in the distance.
A LIGHTNING ROD PROTECTS THIS TRULLO
of Sant' Antonio Church (see illustration, page 250) here stands out in
a background of the newer part of Alberobello. A Gothic parish church
own initials in letters three or four feet
high; or a cross, frequently with strangely
drooping arms; or a single letter M, a
pious offering to Mary, the Madonna,
sometimes with the lower ends of the per
pendiculars of the letter extended down
ward and drawn together in curves, mak
ing of it the suggestion of a heart; and I
saw two circles with a perpendicular line
drawn through them, much like the out
line of two apples on a spit.
Sometimes the dweller in a trullo will
indulge himself so far as to outline a great
cross or a two-arm amphora with his in
itials on either side of it; but among these
simple people this is considered ornateness
carried to the point of ostentation.
If the owner have a wall-top margin
around the base of his cone, and if he be
untidy enough to let dust accumulate
there, Nature sometimes adds a note of
decoration. The winds that catch up the
rich, dry earth also catch up seed and
pollen with it; and when, after many
years, perhaps, the deposit becomes thick
enough to sustain an ever-so -delicate root
tendril, the spring rains and summer sun
draw out delicate leaves and blossoms, and
many a trullo's margin is feathered with
slender blades of grass, and with the
blue and red and yellow and purple blooms
of wild flowers, producing a gay floral
cornice (see Color Plate IV).
I found on entering a trullo, whether
of one or more rooms, that the stone fire
place is directly opposite the door. Here
the kettle is set steaming, the meals are
cooked, and in cold weather the family
huddles for the sake of any warming
radiation in the little pit of coals.
If the farmer be poor, his bed is pitched
in a stone alcove in the wall, and, as this
is a poor country, the alcove beds prevail.
In the houses of the well-to-do the beds,
whether out in the room on their own
frames or in alcoves on a stone support,
all seemed broader than they were long.
Generally they were piled high with
feather tick and puffy comforters (see
page 248).
The floors are limestone slates like the
walls and cone, roughly laid in general,
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